Scientific attempts to explain the emergence of living things on Earth should not consider factors external to natural processes
Los intentos científicos de explicar la aparición de los seres vivos en la Tierra no deberían considerar los factores externos a los procesos naturales
"Scientific attempts to explain the appearance of living things on Earth should not consider factors external to natural processes."
Javier Novo, professor of the School of Sciences, reviewed the latest findings on the origin of life in a seminar of the CRYF of the University of Navarra.
"Scientific attempts to explain how living things appeared on earth, by definition, should not take into account factors external to the natural processes themselves. But that does not mean that they are incompatible, they simply offer answers that are at a different hermeneutical level". This was stated by Professor Javier Novo, of the School of Sciences of the University of Navarra, during a seminar organized by the group of research 'Science, Reason and Faith' (CRYF).
Regarding the question of chance in the appearance of life on Earth, he preferred to discard the term because he considered that "it means very different things to a philosopher, a physicist or a person in the street". "If the question is 'could the first living beings have appeared by purely natural processes,' my answer would be decidedly affirmative," he said.
PHOTO: Manuel Castells
On the other hand, he doubted the reliability of arguments based on mathematical calculations because "today it is impossible to calculate the probability of this subject of events with a minimum of reliability".
In his talk, the department professor from Genetics addressed the most recent findings on the origin of life. Among them, he mentioned that in the last five years the oldest fossil of a living being has been documented, a microorganism that lived 3.4 billion years ago. "The synthesis of nucleotides from simpler molecules has also been achieved, and the training of lipid vesicles that can be replicated by simple physical processes," he added.